Grey Tv has launched into a transformative digital journey to modernize and safe its community infrastructure, and I’m excited to share our experiences and insights from this course of. Our story is certainly one of progress, challenges, and revolutionary options which have reshaped our community infrastructure and safety panorama, due to our relationship with our trusted accomplice Zscaler.
Navigating complexities
Based mostly in Atlanta, Georgia, Grey Tv operates in 114 markets throughout 38 states. We purpose for workers in any respect places to be productive and safe, however speedy progress by means of M&As has led to a fancy community infrastructure that obtained in our means.
Our acquisitions left us with a fragmented community comprising a number of WANs and dozens of VPN options, making administration, monitoring, and coverage implementation extraordinarily difficult. Every new acquisition added layers of complexity, and the disparate methods didn’t all the time play properly collectively. By early 2021, we realized the necessity for a radical change to simplify our community and improve safety.
Defining our objectives: boosting resilience whereas reducing danger
Zero belief segmentation was on the core of our technique. As a part of our new safety technique, we developed a roadmap centered on community segmentation by means of zero belief that might deal with customers, workloads, branches, and web of issues (IoT)/operational know-how (OT) gadgets.
As a result of zero belief assumes that each community interplay is doubtlessly malicious, it might allow us to implement stringent entry controls that considerably scale back the chance of information breaches. One other vital side of zero belief is steady monitoring and evaluation of community exercise to assist us acquire deep insights into community visitors, establish potential threats, and assist safety groups reply swiftly to incidents.
We set three major objectives for our digital transformation that revolved across the Zscaler Zero Belief Change platform:
- Community modernization: Transition away from legacy VPNs and scale back our reliance on conventional WANs. We wanted an answer that might deal with our sprawling community with out the complications that got here with outdated methods.
- Simplification: Handle our community from a single pane of glass to streamline operations and obtain value financial savings. Simplifying our community infrastructure wouldn’t solely make it simpler to handle but additionally scale back the chance of configuration errors and safety breaches.
- Constant safety insurance policies: Implement uniform safety insurance policies throughout all platforms. Consistency in safety insurance policies is essential for decreasing cyber danger, defending our information, and guaranteeing compliance with business rules.
Section One: Enhancing the person expertise and decreasing the assault floor with Zscaler Non-public Entry
Our first step towards implementing a community segmentation technique was deploying Zscaler Non-public Entry (ZPA) to supply customers with direct-to-application connectivity reasonably than bringing them into the community. ZPA was a game-changer, permitting us to get rid of our legacy VPNs, streamline our community, and scale back the assault floor.
The shift to ZPA was seamless, and our distant staff may entry the sources they wanted to do their jobs with out the cumbersome and dangerous connections. It additionally offered granular entry controls, enabling us to outline software and information accessibility parameters.
Section Two: Changing pricey SD-WAN with Zscaler Zero Belief SD-WAN
Subsequent, we launched Zscaler Zero Belief SD-WAN to exchange our conventional WAN network-to-network connections with zero belief user-to-workload and device-to-workload classes. This part remains to be in progress, however we’ve already seen substantial advantages. Zero Belief SD-WAN has simplified our community administration and decreased prices by utilizing customary web connections as an alternative of pricey personal line and MPLS connections.
Zscaler SD-WAN permits us to securely join our department places of work to the web and personal functions, with out the chance of lateral risk motion on the community. Moreover, by leveraging customary web connections with Department Connector, which allows Zero Belief SD-WAN, we minimize prices dramatically with out sacrificing efficiency or safety.
Furthermore, the simplicity of Zero Belief SD-WAN made it simpler for our IT crew to observe and management all department connections from a single administration console. This reduces the executive overhead and makes it simpler to implement constant safety insurance policies throughout your complete community.
Section Three: Future zero belief improvements and integrations
Trying ahead, we plan to additional prolong zero belief segmentation by securing gadgets corresponding to IoT kiosks, computer systems, and servers by means of the Zero Belief Change platform.
Integrating IoT gadgets into our zero belief community is especially thrilling. IoT gadgets have gotten more and more frequent in our business, and guaranteeing their safety is a prime precedence. By connecting and securing these gadgets with the Zero Belief Change platform, we will apply the identical rigorous safety requirements to them as we do to our different community parts. It will assist us defend in opposition to potential vulnerabilities and guarantee our total community is safe.
We additionally plan to discover utilizing Zscaler Zero Belief Machine Segmentation, which gives zero belief segmentation in LAN environments. This might be essential for safeguarding our vital infrastructure and operational know-how (OT) networks from ransomware and different superior assaults. Making a “phase of 1” for every machine will enable us to regulate entry insurance policies at a really granular degree with none modifications to switches and routing infrastructure, additional enhancing our vital infrastructure safety posture. The agentless method will allow us to deploy this revolutionary know-how in hours versus months.
Tangible outcomes and advantages
I’m pleased with my crew’s capability to execute our objectives with the assistance of the Zscaler crew. Not solely did we meet our objectives with no hitch, we additionally reaped these advantages:
- Value financial savings: Using the web as the company community with Department Connector has had a considerable monetary affect, liberating up sources we will reinvest into different enterprise areas.
- Diminished enterprise danger: By implementing constant safety insurance policies throughout all platforms, minimizing the assault floor, and stopping lateral motion we now have improved our danger profile. We’re now extra assured in our capability to guard our information and adjust to regulatory necessities.
- Improved enterprise agility and scalability: The cloud-based Zscaler structure permits us to simply add new customers, gadgets, and places with out the necessity for advanced {hardware} installations or upgrades. Moreover, streamlined M&A processes have allowed us to combine new acquisitions shortly and securely with ZPA and Zscaler SD-WAN. This flexibility has been essential in guaranteeing that our community can sustain with our increasing enterprise.
Our journey with Zscaler has been nothing in need of transformative. We now have a scalable, safe, and environment friendly community that helps our progress and operational wants. I encourage different organizations dealing with related challenges to contemplate the Zero Belief Change platform. It has made a world of distinction for us.
As we glance to the longer term, we’re excited in regards to the potentialities that lie forward. The continued evolution of our community infrastructure will allow us to remain forward of rising threats and be certain that our staff can work securely and effectively from wherever. We’re dedicated to sustaining our zero belief ideas and leveraging the most recent Zscaler applied sciences to maintain our community safe.
I hope our story evokes you to embark by yourself path to a safer and environment friendly community infrastructure.
Watch Brian Morris from Grey Tv’s full Zenith Stay ’24 presentation.
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